Maryland orders a review of Diebold Systems

I received this from two state senators today. It is a press release from Gov. Ehrlich. At least he's good for something.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Shareese N. DeLeaver

Wednesday, August 6, 2003 Henry P. Fawell

(410) 974.2316



Governor Ehrlich Orders Independent Review of Electronic Voting System



ANNAPOLIS - Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. today directed the Department of Budget & Management and the State Board of Elections to initiate an independent review of the Diebold Election Systems, Inc. electronic voting system that the State is scheduled to install as its voting system this year. Science Application International Corp. (SAIC), under an existing contract for security services with the State, will conduct the review and submit its findings to the State in four weeks.



"Government has no more fundamental obligation than to ensure the integrity of the democratic election process," said Governor Ehrlich. "In an effort to strengthen public confidence in Maryland's election process, I have ordered a thorough, fully-independent review of the Diebold system by a third party leader in information security. I believe this is an appropriate step toward ensuring the voter's fundamental right to an accessible, accurate and accountable election process."



The review will include a test bed using the relevant Diebold hardware and software configurations. The test will be built as dictated by State Board of Elections regulations, standards and procedures developed for polling places. SAIC will review guideline and procedural documentation from the State Board and the Local Boards of Election that used the Diebold system in the 2002 election and conduct interviews with election directors, local IT offices and election judge poll workers. Once adapted to a simulated Maryland election environment, SAIC will evaluate the claims of voting security and integrity vulnerabilities. SAIC's report will be in the form of a risk assessment that addresses identified risks and the State Board of Elections mitigation process.



"I welcome Governor Ehrlich's decision to order an independent review of Diebold's electronic voting system," said Gilles Burger, Chairman of the State Board of Elections. "We at the State Board have confidence in the Diebold system and our tailored implementation methodology. We hold the utmost value in voter integrity and security and take credible claims of vulnerability seriously. We are also a learning organization. We are wholly committed to taking all appropriate steps to safeguard the voters' right to an accurate election process. This review is an important step toward that goal."



-Epoch

... and then nothing. And the GOP will steal the next election.

Welcome to the Matrix. It's run by Karl Rove. Please bend over for your butt tattoo.

It's one or the other. We need to look into SAIC. They could be fully funded by the federal govt....... I hope I am wrong.

Here's a bit about them:

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), is the nation's largest employee-owned research and engineering company, providing information technology, systems integration and eSolutions to commercial and government customers.

http://www.saic.com/

Boy, they sure do have a lot of contracts with our military:

http://www.saic.com/contractcenter/viewcon.html

But they wouldn't want to piss off anyone in the White House with the "wrong" conclusion.

They are as military-industrial-complex as it gets. "employee-owned" means they have no outside oversight at all.

following his stint at the IAEA and prior to his current gig.

SAIC is an employee owned government contractor. I have alot of experience with the Maryland guys, especially their business developers and program managers. But let me say this, they do have some powerful friends in Congress and the Justice Department.

And they aren't going to get the review done if 4 weeks. In maryland, they never delivered anything on time or within budget.

BMI buddies I believe

will create a stir in DC, given the close proximity.

So far, we have the Pentagon involved with Accenture/election.com
General Dynamics,
Diversified Dynamics,
Northrop Grumman

All getting involved in voting systems.

Take a gander at the companies run by SAIC (and by the way, its board of directors is packed with military types)

At SAIC we have over 35 companies, subsidiaries and equity partners. A partial listing is provided below.

AMSEC LLC
Specialists in full ship systems support: command and control systems, combat systems, communications, information warfare, main propulsion systems, hull & deck systems, auxiliary systems.

Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC
A joint venture between SAIC and Bechtel, Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC provides research, engineering and nuclear science capabilities to meet the unique challenge of science and engineering for the Yucca Mountain Project.

Data Systems & Solutions
A joint venture between Rolls-Royce and SAIC, DS&S incorporates Rolls-Royce engineering/controls expertise with SAIC's systems integration and information technology skills.

Hicks & Associates (H&AI)
Defense industry consulting.

Saudi SAI
Installation and maintenance of computer systems, telecommunications systems, and other data analysis systems in Saudi Arabia.

Diebold is on the ropes and they reach out to military contractors by way of the governor of Maryland. Help.

Bev

the "shut people up" one. :-(

Is their sufficient precedent? NAACP? Disenfrancised voters?

of MD's 2002 election because I still don't believe all the votes were counted properly. I know we had some touch screens in operation and wouldn't be surprise if there was some hanky panky. This is just my gut feeling. I think if there was anything not on the up and up they would want it buried ASAP - what do you think? The voters are just so gullible and accepting, but our country is in serious jeopardy and the longer this goes on the deeper trouble it will be for all of us.

....Great IndyMedia article regarding Kay and SAIC....They have raked in close to a billion Govt subsidized dollars since 2000 and now their ex CEO is promising to find WMD....Definitly NO conflict of interest in this integrity laden Administration....Thanks for the link Bev Harris....

From a publication of the Northern Illinois University's Sociology Dept's publication: The Crypt.

From January 1994 of that publication --

http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt/other/saic2.htm
SNIPS:

January 1994
Science Applications International Corporation, of which Inman is a director, has many members in top spots within the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, in standard behavior-mode, refused to comment to the Times on anything concerning Science Applications. William J. Perry, the current second in command at the Pentagon and the man who has replaced Inman as nominee, was a director of Science Applications until he was elevated to his current position in 1993. Like Inman, Perry is a military-industrial complex insider, steeped in the Strangelovian traditions of Cold War secrecy and superweapons development.

Perry, given the fatuous title "godfather of stealth technology" by the Washington Post in 1989 when the truth about the disastrous B-2 bomber began to leak, was Jimmy Carter's undersecretary for research and engineering in the late Seventies when stealth projects, among other bizarre schemes for Doomsday weaponry, began disappearing into the nascent vortex of SAR (Special Access Required) - or "deep black" financing.

In addition, Perry was involved intimately with the application and strategy behind the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a space-based radio-navigating system meant to supply US forces with concise, accurate, three-dimensional locating information on land, sea and in the air. In the late Seventies, Perry argued strongly for corruption of any commercially available GPS real-time data so that no one could use the system for meaningful purpose, thereby ensuring no value to a potential enemy. The policy backfired during the Gulf War, when US military forces were faced with a shortage of hand-held GPS receivers capable of unscrambling encrypted military channel data.

The Pentagon unscrambled GPS transmission so civilian receivers could also be used in the war effort. At the same time, according to
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Ashtech, a French-owned, California-based firm developed a GPS receiver capable of correcting Pentagon-corrupted GPS data, making it more accurate than receivers - made by Rockwell International - upon which the military was relying.
Perry was also an advocate of strong research into the effects of induction of electromagnetic pulses in satellite circuitry by proximal nuclear explosions, specifically concerning the GPS.

Others in the defense establishment at the time felt the study of near nuclear bursts on satellites unnecessary, simply because they carried the equal risk of damaging the instigator's space assets.

In 1980, Perry - then the number three man in the Pentagon - stood in the way of Congress when it tried to find out something of the procedures for going to nuclear war. All Perry volunteered was the assertion that everything would work, that the Soviets would indeed be bombed whether or not the President, the White House, Washington, D.C., or the rest of the country were pulverized.

SNIP

OTHER ARTICLES:

More SAIC-relevant links at the above link:

NEW: Complete Crypt News 42.
Science Applications, DoD and the architects of cyberfear."
The groovin' cats at Science Applications who speak of "electronic Pearl Harbor."
The favorite slogan of U.S. Info-warriors.
The Info-warriors of National Defense University: faux Alvin Tofflers.
A Science Applications honcho yearns to launch viruses.
Back to Crypt Newsletter

NETWORKING WITH SPOOKS (COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY)
(not sure of the date)

http://mediafilter.org/caq/internic


THE INTERNET IS CHANGING FROM A PUBLIC RESOURCE TO A LUCRATIVE
OPERATION INFLUENCED BY SPOOKS AND FORMER PENTAGON OFFICIALS.
OPEN ACCESS AND INFORMATION ARE INCREASINGLY CONTROLLED.

SNIP

In September 1995, NSI instituted the fee system.

A few months earlier, it had been bought out by Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC). This privately held company with 20,000 employees and 450 offices around the globe has close ties to the Defense Department and intelligence agencies. Its current board of directors includes former National Security Agency chief Bobby Inman, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, and the former head of research and development for the Pentagon, Donald Hicks. Ex-CIA Director Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense William Perry, and CIA Director John Deutch have been past members. Eighty-three percent of the company's $2 billion annual revenue < comes from government contracts, including defense, intelligence, and law enforcement contracts. It is designing new information systems for the Pentagon, helping to automate the FBI's computerized fingerprint identification system, and last year won a $200 million contract to provide "information support'' to the Internal Revenue Service.

Some of these contracts, along with the company's strong intelligence and defense links, raise fears that SAIC will abuse the information it controls through its key "I don't want a spook corporation,particularly a private spook corporation,
to be anywhere near a control point on the global cooperative Internet,'' said James Warren, a writer and Internet civil liberties activist. But McCandlish of the Electronic Frontier Foundation described SAIC's ownership of Network Solution as a "non issue.'' "The Internet itself was a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency project. It's been true for a long time. It's not some big secret.''


CAN WE JUST CONCLUDE THAT SAIC IS THE 3RD ARM OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND BE DONE WITH IT?!!!

I am speechless.

On the other hand -- this just shows us how very, very close to the nerve center of evil we have gotten!

Wasn't it someone at the Maryland SOS who said they would let the Johns Hopkins' dudes take a look at the machines and test them???

Boy, they had to put a lid on that one....and quick!

call in on the phone to talk about this. I didn't hear the whole thing because I was at work, but I believe Mark Steiner said he'll
have some more shows about this topic. Maybe Bev could contact Mark Steiner and be an invited guest to a future program (WYPR Baltimore - Public Radio)

The "Johns Hopkins' dudes" worked for SAIC. Imagine that.

The fucking worst of the worst.

This "evaluation" will go hand in hand with the Diebold rebuttal, whenever and whatever form it takes and swiftly bury the Maryland issue deeper by a "satisfying" evaluation which will be meaningless if Diebold either "patches" the system later or if these goons do a whitewash of Swiss cheese current system.

Watch the timing and the speed of this review. They will go as fast as they dare or drag it out and waffle until too late.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=128&topic_id=8487&mesg_id=8487

See post 47 and the one immediately before it.

Thanks,

Bev Harris

Like Bremer, Rice, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the cast of hardened corporate characters, David Kay is an overfed relic from a past rightwing hawk regime. Under Reagan, he was a chief scientist for the Pentagon as well as serving as a section chief for the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Administration of the UN) from 1983 until 1991. During this time, Hans Blix - Kay's boss - who was a man of integrity, was continually pressured by first Reagan, then Bush I. to come up with 'evidence' that oil-rich Iraq posed a sufficient nuclear threat for the US to invade (and thus to capture the oil).

In fact, until Kay came along, most experts in most western nations believed there was no evidence for an extensive WMD program in Iraq. But after the war, when Bush I needed greater validation for his actions in the run up to the 1992 election, Kay was made chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq. UNSCOM was created in response to the Bush claims that Iraq was a hotbed of WMD weaponry that had to be 'dismantled.' Kay's investigations turned up all sorts of 'evidence' -given the time lapse from the end of the war to Kay's mission, who knows how much of it was planted -possibly all of it. Certainly the contributions of some 'defectors' have been totally dicredited. But UNSCOM produced the same sort of arrays of conveniently -in fact, unbelievably- detailed documents, all just left 'just laying around,' waiting to be found by Kay and company. The same evidence we hear reported ad infinitum and sans question on NBC, CNN, et al. Thanks to Kay's obliging efforts for Bush after Gulf War I, the stage was neatly set for Gulf War II. In fact, the entire invasion of Iraq was trumped up over the UN clause referring to WMDs. more...

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/268143.shtml

Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds

Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. more...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,977853,00.html

beginning of the end for all of us. It is too late.

to get away with this. I did some research on SAIC last night and their tentacles are truly into every dark corner of our cabal. They are bad news, not to mention poppy is a former board member. Where are the Democrats on this?